Straw Poll Loses McCain, Its Star

By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Published: March 11, 2006

It was advertised as the great defining event of a campaign that has not really begun.

Nearly 2,000 Republicans gathered here to listen to six potential presidential candidates and then pick their favorite in a straw poll on Saturday. No matter that it is 22 months until a single Republican votes: the Southern Republican Leadership Conference quickly turned into a swirling political circus, complete with candidates, senators, governors, consultants and television crews tromping through the ornate lobby of the Peabody Hotel.

But on Friday, Senator John McCain of Arizona, one of the party's leading prospective presidential candidates, announced he would instruct his supporters not to vote for him and to instead write in the name of President Bush, as a show of support.

The move left supporters of Mr. McCain's main rival -- Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, who had been looking for a big hometown win -- sputtering. And it greatly diminished the importance of an event that was, truth be told, of debatable significance in the first place.

''Straw polls are entertaining, my friends, even extremely early ones,'' Mr. McCain said in remarks that were prepared for delivery Friday night and that aides distributed with undisguised glee. ''But I think we have bigger things to worry about. So if any friends here are voting for me, please don't. Just write in President Bush's name. For the next three years, with the country at war, he's our president, and the only one who must have our support today.''

Mr. Frist's advisers and the poll organizer suggested that Mr. McCain was acting out fear that he was heading for a drubbing. Asked if Mr. Frist would now do the same thing as Mr. McCain did, an adviser, Jim Dyke, responded in an e-mail message: ''Panic about the outcome?''

Mr. McCain's maneuver reverberated as far away as Washington, where it inspired gallows humor among embattled Bush administration officials, who began contemplating an outcome where, write-in or not, a sitting president is defeated by Mr. Frist on Saturday night.